Are teams missing out on an opportunity to further development for hitters?

With the year winding to a close, Baseball Prospectus is revisiting some of our favorite articles of the year. This was originally published on May 20, 2016.

Watch any minor league pre-game batting practice, and you’ll see a familiar scene. Hitters rotate in and out of the cage in groups of four or five. They each take five to six rounds of BP, smacking meatballs lobbed by coaches throwing on flat ground 45-50 feet from the plate. Hitters dedicate a round or three to bunting and situational work. When they aren’t at the plate, most take extra grounders or flies at their defensive home, while the rest rock-pile with the pitchers. Current top 40 hits blare from the loudspeaker; the youngest and most sunburned coach may or may not request more volume.

At a glance, Josh Tomlin’s success is a mystery. Pitching for a team where everyone and their brother pairs a plus fastball with a hard slider, Tomlin’s stuff is comparatively pedestrian. His average heater barely scrapes the upper-80s and “loopy” is the best descriptor for his breaking ball. He had the fifth-lowest strikeout rate in the American League this year, and only James Shields and Jered Weaver allowed more home runs.

The first two games of this series have been long and somewhat messy, but they’ve both been close and competitive. The starting pitchers haven’t been so dominant as to choke off the action of the game. Neither game has seemed to get away from either team. The depth of each team, in the lineup and on the mound, has been on display. That’s why this series is tighter than any of the other three Division Series have been through two games. Now both sides will have their depth tested even further, having traveled across the country without a day off, and having used six pitchers apiece on Sunday.

After getting blown out in Game 2, the Red Sox head home with their season hanging by a thread. Obviously the first two games didn’t go well for Boston, but Cleveland’s short-handed staff gives the Red Sox a chance to get back in the series.

September call-ups might give Bruce Bochy an 11th reliever to call on, but they also make dreams come true for minor leaguers on the bubble.

After nine years, 1,100 innings, and three trips to the Mexican Winter League, 31-year-old knuckleballer Eddie Gamboa heard the magic words: “You’re going to the big leagues.” The Rays were prescient enough to film the big moment, and if his shocked expression, tears, and heartfelt hugs for the coaching staff didn’t reveal just how much the call meant to him, his words took care of the rest. “It's something you dream of,” Gamboa said. “When it becomes a reality, it kind of blows your mind.”

Every night, 25ish Hall of Famers play baseball for us. How aware are we?

Bill James once wrote that, on average, there are approximately 25 future Hall of Fame players in the league in any given season. That number has fluctuated a bit throughout history, of course, and with 30 teams playing now, I’d take the over on that number today. Recently, I was thinking about which of the players from 2016 are going to be in the Hall someday, and I quickly realized that there are a lot fewer locks than I had previously imagined.

By my count, there are only five slam dunk, no doubt, no steroid concerns, could retire and plan a trip to Cooperstown players in the league right now: Albert Pujols, Ichiro, Adrian Beltre, Carlos Beltran, and Miguel Cabrera. You might say David Ortiz or Mike Trout and I wouldn’t disagree; I certainly think both of them will make it. But once it became clear that there are a whole lot less than 25 locks in the league, the next move was obvious: Find a buddy, draft two teams of superstars, put the results in a time capsule, and see (30 years down the line) who picked more Hall of Famers.

Fortunately, Meg Rowley was up for the challenge. Below, you’ll see the results of our draft. We used a simple snake draft method and went through 25 rounds. We figure that most of the players we took in the first 10 rounds will make it; we also imagine that we whiffed entirely on at least one guy. Ultimately though, the process revealed just how difficult it is to project which superstars will and won’t make the Hall of Fame.